1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device for treating an individual suffering from cardiac insufficiency, cardiac arrest, circulatory arrest or stroke.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Given the current level of knowledge and the current therapeutic methods, individuals, more particularly patients, who have suffered cardiac arrest, can only be resuscitated without damage to the brain or the heart functions if cardiopulmonary resuscitation is successfully carried out within a period of three to five minutes after the cardiac arrest has occurred. Resuscitation carried out with a further time delay inevitably leads to severe cerebral damage due to reperfusion with normal blood which causes massive damage to the ischaemic tissue.
Ischaemic and reperfusion modifications in tissues mainly play a central role in heart surgery. For example mycocardial ischaemia is either induced by the surgeon himself, for instance as part of global ischaemia through aortic clamping, or also during a heart transplant and/or regionally in “off-pump surgery” for application of a coronary by-pass. However, emergency operations are also performed on patients with myocardial ischaemia who, for example, are suffering from cardiogenic shock, acute coronary occlusion or a condition immediately after resuscitation. For these reasons heart surgeons have been intensively occupied with ischaemia and reperfusion phenomena for decades.
In accordance with current knowledge, it can be assumed that ischaemia, even long-lasting ischaemia, only causes relatively small structural damage to the heart muscle. However, if after such an ischaemic attack the myocardium is reperfused with normal blood under “physiological” conditions, an additional damaging mechanism occurs explosively, which in the meantime has been well researched as “reperfusion damage”. On reperfusion of an ischaemically damaged myocardium with normal blood, processes suddenly occur which can definitively destroy the already damaged tissue.
To prevent or completely hinder the reperfusion damage occurring through reperfusion with normal blood, concepts have been developed which after revascularization initially endeavour to treat the ischaemically damaged myocardium, whereby both the composition of the initial reperfusate and the conditions of the initial perfusion are aimed at treating the damage occurring during the ischaemia and/or ruling out possibly occurring reperfusion damage right from the start.
The concept of controlled reperfusion is based on the one hand on modifying the initial reperfusate differently from the body's own blood as well as modifying the conditions of the initial reperfusion.
In connection with this, DE 696 31 046 T2 discloses a device for treating a patient with cardiac arrest which uses the known method of selective aortic arch perfusion, SAAP in short, in which in order to carry out relatively isolated perfusion of the heart and brain, a balloon occlusion catheter is applied, usually via the patient's femoral artery, to the location of the descending aortic arch and then dilated, after which an oxygenated blood substitute solution, for example perfluorocarbon emulsion or a polymerized haemoglobin solution is then infused via the lumen of the SAAP catheter. The blood substitute solution, also known as a protective solution, is administered intracorporeally using a pulsing device with a pulsating rhythm. In a variant embodiment the known device has a blood withdrawal means, with which blood can be withdrawn from the patient which is taken to blood oxygenation means for oxygenation and, together with a protective solution added to the oxygenated blood, is infused into the patient via blood return means. It should be noted here that to carry out selective aortic arch perfusion and thus to use the above device, a surgical procedure and the associated clinical infrastructure are necessary.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,942 discloses a comparable procedure for resuscitating a person, in which by inflating a balloon catheter in the region of the ascending aorta in order to increase the blood flow into the coronary arteries, a blood-compatible, oxygen liquid is injected for flowing on into the coronary arteries.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,387,798 B2 describes a method for the resuscitation of patients suffering from cardiac arrest, in which a liquor fluid is taken from the subarachnoid area of the patient's central nervous system. An artificially composed cerebrospinal fluid containing a large number of components, such as sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, water, polypeptides, insulin and ATP, is then infused, whereupon conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation is carried out
For resuscitating a patient or an animal, U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,078 discloses administering a solution of Deferoxamine with water-soluble biopolymers to the patient to be treated.
WO 94/21195 describes administering an A3 adenosine receptor agonist for preparing the organ in order to protect it against ischaemic damage.
In EP 1 021 084 B1 a method of eliminating or reducing ischaemic damage to an organ is set out. Here, the damaged organ is rinsed with a buffered physiological solution in order to remove acidic products which have accumulated in the organ during the period of oxygen deficiency.
U.S. Published Application 2005/0101907 A1 describes an automatic system for the resuscitation of a patient in which a single fluid is infused in relation to the fluid inflow as function of physiological parameters of the patient.
A comparable automatic infusion system for treating trauma patients is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,636, for infusion of an administered fluid into the patient with the infusion pressure and infusion flow being sensor-recorded and computer-monitored.
DE 10 2008 024 471 A1 describes a heart-lung by-pass device which can be connected to a patient by one tube to the arterial and one tube to the venous blood vessel system. Extracorporeally, between the tubes, there is a blood flow line along which bi-directionally operating pumps and a fluid reservoir can be provided. Controllable fluid control valves fitted with sensors are also arranged along the blood flow line. Through bi-directional pump operation, the lungs assume the function of the oxygenators of the heart-lung by-pass device.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,308,320 describes a portable resuscitation device for cardiac arrest patients having blood withdrawal means, a pump for moving the blood within the devices, means for oxygenating the blood and means for returning the oxygen-enriched blood back into the blood circulation.